As a method for forming rubber members of a pneumatictire, well-known is a strip winding method by use of an unvulcanized rubber strip. In this method, the rubber strip is continuously wound in the ti re circumferential direction on a surface of a wound body such as foam for forming a tire; thereby forming annular rubber members (tread rubber, sidewall rubber and the like, for example). In the strip winding method, different kinds of cross-sectional shapes of the rubber members can be obtained by varying a winding pitch and the winding number of the rubber strip.
And the following Patent Document 1 discloses, as shown in FIG. 9, a device for bonding a rubber strip (a) for the strip winding method. The bonding device (a) bonds a rubber strip T with high accuracy on a surface of a non-linear cylinder-like wound body (b) such as a drum-like body for example and comprises a transporting conveyor (c) for transporting the rubber strip.
In particular, the bonding device (a) comprises:
(1) a lateral moving means (gx) to laterally move the transporting conveyor (c) in an X-axis direction, which is parallel to a shaft center (bi) of the wound body (b),
(2) an up-and-down move means (gy) to move forward and backward the transporting conveyor (c) toward the wound body (b) in a Y-axis direction, and
(3) a gyrating means (gz) to gyrate the transporting conveyor (c) around a shaft center (Zi) in a perpendicular z-axis direction.
Thus, even when the wound body (b) has a non-linear cylinder-like profile, a foremost-side guiding roller (e) in the transporting direction of the transporting conveyor (c) can be freely inclined in concert with the profile. Therefore, it is possible to accurately apply the rubber strip (T) without incurring a large deformation such as a wrinkle and non-uniform growth.
However, in the above-mentioned structure itself, the entire of the elongated transporting conveyor (c) gyrating around the shaft center (Zi) in the perpendicular Z-axis direction. Therefore, the gyration needs a large space, and it makes difficult to set parallel with another bonding device. Moreover, in the area inside the gyration, there is a possibility of collision with the transporting conveyor (c); therefore, it requires a large limitation of a working space of a worker, and it leads to a drawback in working efficiency.